DOCTOR. Certainly. Here is your prescription. You will take it to the chemist’s and have it made up. GEORGE [_taking the prescription_] No. DOCTOR. Yes: you will do just what everyone else does. GEORGE. Everyone else is not in my position. I know what to do. [_He raises his hand to his temple_]. DOCTOR. Five times out of six the men who sit in that chair before me do that, perfectly sincerely. Everyone thinks himself more unfortunate than the rest. On second thoughts, and after I have talked to them, they realize that this disease is a companion with which one can live; only, as in all households, domestic peace is to be had at the price of mutual concessions. Come now, I repeat, there is nothing in all this beyond the ordinary. It is simply an accident that might happen to anybody. I assure you it is far too common to merit the name ‘French disease.’ There is, in fact, none that is more universal. If you wanted to find a motto for the creatures who make a trade of selling their love, you could almost take the famous lines, ‘There is your master.... It is, it was, or it must be.’ GEORGE [_putting the prescription in the outer pocket of his coat_] But I at least ought to have been spared. DOCTOR. Why? Because you are a man of good position? Because you are rich? Look round you. Look at these works of art; five are copies of John of Bologna’s Mercury, six of Pigallo’s, three are reproductions—in wax, to be sure—of the lost Wounded Love by Paccini; do you think that all these have been presented to me by beggars? GEORGE [_groaning_] I’m not a rake, doctor. My life might be held up as an example to all young men. I assure you, no one could possibly have been more prudent, no one. See here; supposing I told you that in all my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you say to that? DOCTOR. That one would have been enough to bring you here. GEORGE. No, doctor, not one of those two. No one in the world has dreaded this so much as I have; no one has ever taken such infinite precautions to avoid it. My first mistress was the wife of my best friend. I chose her on account of him; and him, not because I cared most for him, but because I knew he was a man of the most rigid morals, who watched his wife jealously and didn’t let her go about forming imprudent connections. As for her, I kept her in absolute terror of this disease. I told her that almost all men were taken with it, so that she mightn’t dream of being false to me. My friend died in my arms: that was the only thing that could have separated me from her. Then I took up with a young seamstress. DOCTOR. None of your other friends had sufficiently reassuring morals? GEORGE. No. You know what morals are nowadays. DOCTOR. Better than anyone.